"Yes, father, but that seems no great clue."
"Perhaps not, Mary, but it shows at least that there was one fellow about here who may be considered to have had a quarrel with the Carnes, and who was a thoroughly bad character, and who—and this is of importance—was engaged, with or without her parents' consent, to Miss Carne's own maid."
Mary gave a little gasp of excitement.
"Now it seems, further," her father went on, "that some time between this poaching affray and the murder—I could not inquire closely into dates—Ruth Powlett was found insensible on the road going up the hill, and was very ill for some days; she said she had had a fall, and of course she may have had, although it is not often young women fall down so heavily as to stun themselves. But it may of course have been something else."
"What else, father?"
"Well, it is possible she may have met this lover of hers, and that they may have had a quarrel. Probably she knew he had been engaged in this poaching affair, and may have told him that she would have nothing more to do with him, and he may have knocked her down. Of course, this is all mere supposition, but it is only by supposition that we can grope our way along. It seems she was well enough anyhow to go up to her place again at The Hold, for she was the first to discover the murder, and the shock was so great that she was ill for weeks, in fact in great danger; they say she has been greatly changed ever since. I don't know whether anything can be made of that, my dear."
"I don't know. I don't see what, father," Mary said, after thinking for some time, "unless she is fancying since that it was this man who did it. Of course, anyhow, it would be a fearful shock for a girl to find her mistress lying murdered, and perhaps it may be nothing more than that."
"No doubt, it may be nothing more than that, Mary; but it's the other side of the case we have to look at. Let us piece the things together. Here we have four or five facts, all of which may tell. Here is a bad character in the village; that is one point. This man had a poaching affray with Mr. Carne's keepers; he killed, or at any rate the coroner's jury found that he killed, one of the keepers. He is engaged to Miss Carne's own maid. This maid is just after this poaching business found insensible in the wood, and tells rather an improbable story as to how it came about. She is the first to enter her mistress's room, and then she has a serious illness. Of course, any girl would be shocked and frightened and upset, but it is not so often that a serious illness would be the result. And lastly, she has been changed ever since. She has, as you remarked to me the other day, an absent, preoccupied sort of way about her. Taken altogether, these things certainly do amount to something."
"I think so too, father; I think so too," Mary Armstrong said, walking up and down the little room in her excitement. "I do think there may be something in it; and you see, father, after this poaching business, the man wanted to get away, and he may have been in want of money, and so have thought of taking Miss Carne's watch and jewels to raise money to take him abroad."
"So he might, my dear. That is certainly a feasible explanation, but unfortunately, instead of taking them away, you see he buried them."